The key to supporting. Please, don’t just sit in the brush… Part 1

Let me guess, you think it’s just sitting there, being a pansy, chucking down a ward occasionally and typing “soz” when you steal a kill? Get out. Go back to top lane.

Support is hard as balls. I hate support. Do you know why I hate it? It’s because it’s hard as balls. You need to know everything about the lane. You need to know your ADC’s cooldowns, his health, his damage capability, the enemy ADC’s exact same, YOUR OWN health and cooldowns… You need to know a lot, is what I’m saying.

Sure, you could pick Taric, stun the first person to walk into range, flash in and Shatter and then walk away. Yeah, you could do that. Congratulations, your ADC might get a kill. Too bad that the enemy ADC also killed you, won the trade against your ADC and now has the lane to themselves.

Let’s break it down:

What do you need to do as support?

A lot of things. Just… a lot of things.

Wards: You will be warding. Sounds simple I know, but you need to know the right places to ward. For example, a vision ward is very strong right now due to the Oracle’s nerf at the beginning of Season 3. That delightful pink ward allows you to control the river. Push your lane slightly, pink the river brush, and congratulations; assuming the enemy support didn’t ward the tri-brush, you have total coverage of the river.

Paying attention to where the enemy wards are: Where is the support going? Oh, he’s just going to river, probably warding no problem. NO. Follow him. Find out where he puts the ward; did he place it in river brush? Tri-brush? At dragon? Where is he warding, so as to give you a better knowledge of the best place to pink ward.

Poke: Depending on the champion, you may be largely responsible for poking the enemy duo away from CS. What’s that? You’re playing Nami/Sona/Lulu/anyone with ranged poke, and I see you sitting in brush? Stop it. Attack them, dammit!

Time the minions: Knowing when to initiate trades is of paramount importance; if you begin a trade with the enemy duo when they have the minion advantage (that is, they have more minions in range than you do) you will likely lose the trade due to the enemy minions hitting you. Remember, minions will swap targets to an enemy champion if their friendly champion is targeted. Use this to your advantage! Know that, when you have a minion advantage, that’s when to initiate, to force them to attack you!

Support your ADC: You’ve already got a long list of things to manage, but perhaps the most important is the one you’re named for; you need to support! You need to be helping the ADC get fed, feeding him kills, enabling him to catch the enemy (or just straight out catching the enemy for him) or doing things as simple as tanking damage for him. Is that an Ezreal Q coming for your ADC? Walk in front of him and take it, especially if you’re naturally tanky like Taric/Leona/Alistair. You want your ADC as strong as possible for team fights and tower pushing, so it’s up to you to make sure he can do what he does best.

Sadly, sometimes the ADC will be terrible. It will happen. They’ll just be goddamn terrible. You can still do things; you can create really, really obvious situations wherein the ADC can get kills. It can be hard, it can be daunting, but it’s your job dammit.

Make shot calls: Another key important task is to try and be the one to call shots. As a support, you often have abilities that enable you to initiate onto the enemy (except someone like Soraka) so it’s often your job to be the one to start a fight, to pick out the enemy carry, to win the game. That’s right, I just said that supports win the game. Very rarely have I totally stomped my lane and then go on to win the game without my support. It’s the supports who ensure your safety, your dominance and your success.

Worst of all? It’s thankless. People will rarely give you the credit you deserve. The ADC will get a “gj” or “gg”, but you will get nothing. But you will know. And, most likely, your ADC will know as well but be too proud to admit it. But know that, when you’re in the end-game chat with the “victory” message displayed proudly, and all your enemy teammates are saying to report their ADC, whereas your teammates will all be honoring their ADC, you will know.

And sometimes, something magical will happen. The ADC won’t thank you in-game, nor even after chat. They’ll just go along with everyone about how great they are, never mentioning you. It will appear thankless and pointless; hell, you’ll think about giving up support altogether.

But then… You get a Teamwork honour. You might even get a covert friend request, maybe a duo partner in future.

And it will all be worth it.

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Next time, I’ll continue this segment about supporting with a post on the different supports, there strengths and weaknesses, objectively, and my feelings about them from a subjective standpoint.

Dude. Decent article I guess. I noticed 2 spelling mistakes though and the paragraph where you talk about minion advantage doesn’t make sense. At the start of it you say the enemy needs the advantage, then at the end you say we need the advantage. Proof read your shit before you publish it please.

I’m going through again; I do apologize, that was sloppy to have spelling mistakes.

You misread about the minion advantage; I’m saying that if the enemy have the advantage in minions you will lose the trade, thus it is important to make sure to watch the minions, ensuring that you have the advantage once you decide to trade.

i totally agree with all of it. and loads of adc players will be like: “i did everything this game” or: “my support is worthless” (meanwhile gets healed, wards will appear, helped, maybe carried in some kind of way) adc’s so mean :D

That’s why i play both adc and support, it helps humble you, but also hepls u win lane alot, because as an adc who supports, you know how the matchup goes, and how u would like to be supported, and as a support, u know the adc’s cooldowns, and how the lane should be played alot more, and as adc, often tahnk th support if their any good, and even dont flame when they steal a kill, bc i know how hard it can be to know if they will die with the last hit.

I’ve started to play only supports and there are some more things you need to do as a support (at least I’m doing it and I’m considering it as a part of supporting):

– Controling enemy jungler. If you have a ward in try-bush and you see enemy jungler standing there and waiting for opportunity to gank you – tell that to your team. Now other lanes can push or even get a free kill or two.

– Controling enemy buffs (This might be a bit difficult but I’m looking forward to main support and to do that I believe this is an important part of it). If you had vision on enemy red/blue buff and you can see when they respawn that means enemy jungler will go to take those buffs. Therefore, he’s gonna be near top/bot (depends on buff) and might gank your lane after taking it (or giving it to other player).

– Controling minion wave. That’s a HUUUUUGE factor imo. You mentioned a fact where a minion wave can grant you a kill or give an easy kill to enemy adc. But another big thing is when you kill enemy adc (or bring them low so adc needs to recall) it is always good to push minions wave to enemy tower. In this way enemy adc loses xp + gold. And when friendly adc comes back to lane a wave will be pushing towards him so no xp nor gold will be lost. Support role is to help quick push minions wave (I see supports going to ward or instantly recalling after a successful gank/kill).

– Paying attention to mid (in higher elo plays even top) lane. If your mid laner loses a tower it is very likely that enemy mid laner gonna gank your laner since he doesn’t have anything else to do. He might go to farm his/your jungle ganking bot lane is sooooo easy after you take enemy turret. Even when your team has all the turrets – always keep an eye on other lanes.

And that’s ONLY for laning phase. As we all know, supporting is about A LOT MOAR. You could probably write the whole book about that.

Anyways, really nice article covering basics and a bit more. I believe many young supporters will find this helpful. I see this is only Part 1 so maybe you going to cover these things in other parts. Keep on with good work!

“Where is the support going? Oh, he’s just going to river, probably warding no problem. NO. Follow him. Find out where he puts the ward; did he place it in river brush? Tri-brush? At dragon? Where is he warding, so as to give you a better knowledge of the best place to pink ward.”

IF you are playing an aggresive support, don’t you dare to follow the other support. You want to go aggresive on their ad carry as soon as their support is out of range. This means to poke/burst og simply zone from CS. You don’t need to follow him to see exactly where he is going, calculate how long it took him and what direction he went, and you will most likely get it right where he warded. :)

That is indeed a good point; one needs to weigh the benefits of choosing to trade at that point versus getting the ward location; in an ideal situation, you’ve already warded the river but it’s half dead, so when their support goes off to do his merry ward dance, you see where he places it, and you get free poke on the enemy ADC.

I don’t think this a good idea if you don’t know where the enemy jungler is for example. And most of the time you will know where he wardead just by measuring how much time he took to ward. There are very few spots that worth placing a ward, everybody uses them. And its very common, at least for me, that if I leave alone my ADC just for one second he will be fucking dead (even if is 1 on 1).

> You’re playing Nami/Sona/Lulu/anyone with ranged poke, and I see you sitting in brush? Stop it. Attack them, dammit!

You need to have into account the range of the enemy carry too. Caitlyn can take free hits outside of Sona’s Q. And I think you should mention that the best time to do poke is when the enemy ADC its going for a last hit.

>Is that an Ezreal Q coming for your ADC? Walk in front of him and take it, especially if you’re naturally tanky like Taric/Leona/Alistair.

I completely disagree with this unless they are going for letal damage. Many people ask me to take Nidalee support spears for them and I just laugh hard. Everyone must dodge skillshots.

>Worst of all? It’s thankless.

Season 1 entire teams congratulated my Sona (ally and enemy wise) and there was a time during season 2 (the time of godlike Soraka and Janna) where my Soraka was pretty cursed by the enemy team for all those countless baits and turn around team fights.

Overall, I think the worst part of playing support is people blaming you for their mistakes.

I should have mentioned that an ideal situation you’ve already warded the river but it’s half dead, so when their support goes off to do his merry ward dance, you see where he places it, and you get free poke on the enemy ADC. This allows you to pink his ward when the time comes.

Gauging range is important yes, but attacking when the enemy ADC goes for last hitting should be a no-brainer – then again, that was the point of this post xD Might update it, thank you.

Are you seriously telling me that if you were playing Leona / Taric, and you had dodged a skillshot but your ADC had messed up and was going to get hit, you wouldn’t take it for him? If that’s the case, I am sorry but you might be a bit of a selfish support! You are both tankier, and have more health regen than him, so it is simply mathematically beneficial to take one for the team.

It is a relatively thankless position; as I said, you might occasionally get thanked for a good stun, but most of the time you won’t be thanked :(

This is pretty much exactly what happened to me. I was a brush stander. I didn’t like calling lanes so I’d usually end up supporting. I would just hand around, fling some stuns and shatter some guys but I would never be ‘in there’. It pretty much changed when Thresh was released. His kit and looks were so cool to me I just started to play him.. A LOT. With more and more game I noticed the imlact I could have. I started playing incredibly aggressive, keeping eye on wards and buying more pink wards than I’ve ever had done before. Jungle ganks started becomming easier and even bad ADC started to make kills. Support can force players to perform amazingly. Whenever I play support now I call shots, I keep map awareness, keep an eye for wards and the opposing jungle. People don’t know what the support does for the team. But you do it for the games where a 24/3 Vayne mentions in /all chat she got carried by her support. And it’s magical.

As an ADC main, I have to fight myself from being furious at whenever a support takes a kill; I have to stop, think, and realize that if the support didn’t, sometimes the kill wouldn’t have been taken!